


But [what] I [don’t] Know [will]...

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46’\-A [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, One Year Later, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, See You Next Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 05:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Stanley and Bill that first afternoon, before the negotiations begin.





	But [what] I [don’t] Know [will]...

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: But [what] I [don’t] Know [will]...  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Stanley and Bill that first afternoon, before the negotiations begin.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: ...And yet-still continuing to try and write Gravity Falls things. Bleh.  
>   
>  _Author’s Note, 2018-Jul-29: This fic takes place in the afternoon of Day 1 of Bill Cipher’s return, almost immediately following the events of[Don't Know Where, Don't Know When…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573628)._

\---

“Nnnnnngh,” Bill groaned as he raised his right hand to his head and slowly levered himself upright on… _whatever_ he was laying on... with his left elbow. He slitted open his eye and let out a hiss as he closed it again quickly, wincing. --The light had gone straight to the back of his skull, careening off the inside of his head, and...

_...Wait._

‘I have a skull?’ was about the first coherent thought that managed to rattle its way throughout his mind.

The second relatively-coherent thought he had was, ‘I have two eyes,’ because he could feel the second one there, even if he didn’t seem to be able to see out of it when he tried slitting _both_ eyes open, and that just made him MAD.

One-eyed vision swimming like he was underwater, and with a head full of pain -- _this wasn’t right, things like this weren’t supposed to hurt, pain was_ supposed _to be_ hilarious _, the sensation jangling him around inside whatever body he’d stolen-_ borrowed _like a bell, it was supposed to make him want to laugh and laugh and laugh_ \-- he reached up with his right hand attached to the end of his right arm and felt around, grabbing, then _ripped away_ what was obscuring his vision with something like a snarl.

He blinked and winced, pushed down the wince and blinked again, both eyes -- _this wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been when the Pines had ripped out his eye, right? only marginally as bad as Shooting Star shooting spray paint into his eye, except not_ \-- and glared down at the offending article he had clutched in his right hand.

And then his glare slid more into a frown as his vision cleared up a bit, as he got used to seeing through two eyes again -- _puppet-practice with Sixer and Pine Tree really had been good for something, after all!_ **HAH!** \-- and then he was just left staring down at the small black piece of _something_ in his hand in confusion because what _was_ that?

He was distracted by this quickly when he got a good look down at himself in the process, and _CURSE THE AXOLOTL WHAT WAS THIS DUMB IDIOCY HAPPENING HERE--_

 _DIFFERENT FORM--_ that’s what the big pink frilly lizard had said -- when karmic retribution came knocking, when his time came to burn, he’d get ‘a different form, a different time’ -- and _THIS WASN’T DIFFERENT **AT ALL!**_ He still had TWO arms and TWO legs and a BODY -- okay maybe not an equilateral body it was completely irregular and irregular suited him much better except no not irregular it was symmetric on the long axis so not really -- and TWO eyes -- he still had two eyes even if his all-seeing eye didn’t seem to be working properly, he could only see one thing out of his second (meta?- _physical???_ ) eye and it wasn’t changing at all really -- and a PHYSICAL FORM -- but he’d gotten one of those for himself during Weirdmageddon so the big pink jerk wasn’t exactly doing him any favors there -- and HOW WAS THIS SUPPOSED TO HELP?!?!

He’d _failed_ \-- oh, and how he _HATED_ to admit that, that after one trillion years of planning, that he’d _failed_ and gotten himself KILLED -- and the Axolotl was supposed to be _helping_ him -- it owed him a favor of sorts, no less! Had said so itself! And yet, it hadn’t helped him at all. Bill knew he’d failed because he hadn’t had enough POWER -- he’d been **stuck** inside the barrier around town, **locked** outside the barrier around the Shack, and **TRAPPED** inside Staley Pines’ own Mindscape where it had become shockingly apparent that his time had come to burn. What little unimaginable power he’d borrowed, stolen, and otherwise managed to scrape together over the hundreds of thousands of years, ever since he’d become a demon and liberated his dimension, simply hadn’t been up to the task of letting him succeed in breaking, burning, and weirdifying his way through any and all obstacles in his path to and _through_ Dimension 46’\\.

...And what had the Axolotl done for him instead, in helping him? Hmmmm? THAT’S RIGHT -- NOTHING!

If the Axolotl had TRULY been up to its word, it would have given him MORE POWER, actually HELPED him, so that he would never fail again -- but it hadn’t. Instead -- and Bill could _feel_ it, even without flexing his fingers and trying to call upon his flames, only to watch his efforts fail MISERABLY -- the Axolotl had _locked his power away_ in this crummy two-bit humanoid form, and made him even less powerful than he had been before!

The worst part was, Bill wasn’t even sure if he was _actually_ human, or just stuck in a messed-up version of his physical form -- his body was in too much pain, screaming at him from all sides, for him to really be able to pay proper attention to his physical being. So he didn’t know and couldn’t tell if he actually had skin cells and just couldn’t hear them dying right now -- which would mean he was most likely inside a human body by means of some esoteric summoning ritual -- or if he wasn’t hearing anything because he didn’t actually have any skin cells _to_ die off -- which would mean that old Ax’y had pulled a number on his real physical form as part-and-parcel of sending him back, ON TOP of everything else.

Either way, it was _annoying_. He didn’t like looking like the mortals who made up his Zodiac wheel; not to mention that ‘Ronnie and the rest of the gang would never let him hear the end of it -- he could look like anyTHING and anyONE he wanted, he’d adamantly refused for ONE TRILLION YEARS to take on a physical form that was anything other than just another more true version of himself, and he hadn’t been about to change his mind at THIS late date, now that he was out of the Nightmare Realm for good.

He was a _TRIANGLE_ , curse the Axolotl, and an equilateral one at that! Why in that stupid lizard’s own name would it inflict THIS on him? And for the love of all that was weird, if he was gonna be stuck in a body so freaking irregular, then he should at least be irregular on the OUTSIDE as well as the INSIDE -- but the Axolotl hadn’t even done THAT for him. This form was bisymmetric AT BEST!

Bill glared down at his stupid human-like hands and _growled_ in his displeasure.

“Uh, you okay, kid?”

Bill started in surprise, twisting his head around to his left, and when he got a good look at who was sitting there--

“ _GAH!!!!_ ”

\---

Stan watched the teenager wake up in pain and confusion, wrest the eyepatch off of himself, get angry, get _more_ angry, start **growling** , and… yep, that was enough of that. He figured he should try and derail the kid while he still could, before he did anything really stupid.

“Uh, you okay, kid?”

The kid clearly hadn’t been paying any attention to his surroundings, because when he swiveled his head around and got one good look at Stan, he freaked out right next to him, practically jumped right off the back of the couch and into the wall of the Shack, yelling.

...except that the kid must’ve hurt something in his neck, not just his head, because halfway up from the cushions the kid’s neck seemed to twinge and his whole body wrenched to a screeching halt. The kid twisted in place and his teeth clenched in pure pain, then his expression showed the beginnings of panic as he collapsed to his knees on the couch cushions and then even his spine gave out.

Stan barely caught him before he fell off the couch, grabbing him underneath his shoulders as he toppled forward.

“Kid, kid, _calm down_ ,” Stan told him, as the teenager collapsed against his chest unwillingly. He held the kid out, away from him, trying to give him some space, and had to stifle a wince as he realized that the teen was having trouble even holding his head up on his neck just then. He saw the kid try, and fail, to raise his head, shoulders twitching and neck tensing, and just… give up, letting his head and arms just hang loosely, hands and fingers twitching almost randomly. “Just breathe, kid. I’m not my brother,” he told the kid as he realized the problem, and he had _really_ mixed feelings about what it meant when he had to follow that up with… “I’m not gonna hurt ya.”

The last part was what did it, Stan figured. Because the next thing he knew, the teenager was giggling, then cackling, then outright _laughing hysterically_ at him. He was laughing so hard he was shaking in Stan’s hands, and Stan had no doubt that if he let go of the kid just then, the teenager’d collapse completely, unable to support his own weight. He didn’t look like he’d be able to catch himself with his hands if that happened, or even _try_ to, with how limp he was otherwise, and the almost defeated-looking slump to his shoulders, and that scared Stanley more than anything.

“Stanley, what’s--” he heard his brother bound up onto the porch and then freeze in place. “--Stanley, _how did he get loose!?_ ” he heard Ford exclaim, and Stan had to stifle a grimace as he turned his head to frown at his brother.

“Really, Ford?” he grumbled out. “You didn’t notice I _already_ had him untied when you came out with the spray chalk ten minutes ago?”

He saw Ford reach for a gun he didn’t have -- because he’d given it to Stanley earlier, it was still in the cooler, the one he was currently _sitting on_ , and he hoped Ford didn’t figure that one out, somehow -- saw his brother’s fingers clench on air next to the empty holster on his thigh, and then watched Ford pale and tense and panic even further, realizing he was unarmed--

“Ford, _stop it!_ ” Stanley barked out irately at his brother, who startled at his tone. “This isn’t Bill!”

“Stan--”

“He’s just a kid!”

“Stanley--”

“He’s _inside_ your dumb unicorn voodoo barrier, Ford!” Stan spat out, because he was so sick and tired of this mess. “--This stops _NOW!_ ”

Great, and now _he_ was mad enough to spit tacks. Stan pulled in a breath, and tried to get his anger under control.

“STANLEY--!”

...And that was when he finally realized that Ford wasn’t arguing with him so much as trying to get his attention. His brother didn’t look _mad_ \-- he looked _scared_.

And then Stan blinked as he felt hands on his arms.

Stan turned his head back to the kid, and blinked again as he stared into the kid’s eyes.

The kid had stopped laughing. He was actually holding his head up, now -- holding his body up, too, by his grasp on Stan’s own biceps, if only barely -- and he had an almost-creepy ‘I-know-something-you-don’t-know’ smile going on.

“Boy, are you stupid,” the teen told him in lilting, almost musically-ringing tones, and that had Stan frowning.

“What?” Stan said. Then he recentered, stopped frowning, and smiled a little. “You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific than that, kid,” Stan told him almost self-deprecatingly, and the kid’s own smile sort of fell off his face. “What exactly am I being stupid about?” _Yeah, I know how to play this game,_ Stan thought, keeping an relaxed expression on his face as the kid stared at him almost blankly. _You think a weak insult like_ that _’s gonna set me off? Try again._

...and the kid did. The kid’s eyes narrowed, and his fingers dug into Stan’s arms a little bit more.

“I’m Bill Cipher,” the kid told him.

Stan stared at him for a moment. Then--

“--Hah!” Stan laughed out with a Mr. Mystery grin. “Yeah, right. And I’m the Queen of England!”

The expression on the kid’s face dropped into a sort of shocked, dumbfounded stare.

“Pull the other one, kid, and maybe I’ll give you a ten Stan-bucks ‘discount’,” Stan all-but-snickered out, because how dumb did he think he was?

The kid was staring at him like he had no idea what to do next, though, so Stan figured he must not rate very high on the kid’s suspected IQ list at all. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Ford had a similar stare going on, too, though he was a little paler. ...Well, that was fine. He could handle this.

“I--” The kid had a weird look going on his face. “You--” His eyebrows dropped a little, in sort of a proto-glare, “ _You--_ ”

“Don’t take it personally, kid,” Stan told him breezily, good-naturedly. “I’ve been conning people for decades. Some things, you just gotta learn by _doing_ , y’know?”

The kid spluttered, looking almost offended. “--I’m _ONE TRILLION_ years old! I--”

“--Really?” Stan cut him off, putting on an amused face. “‘Cause you don’t look a day over eighteen. --Seventeen, _maybe_. Years old, I mean,” Stan said, letting his grin grow. “Not, y’know, _trillions_ , or whatever.”

“What?” The kid looked shocked, of all things, and dropped his head to look down at himself again.

“Yeah, no, nice try, kid. But you gotta really _sell_ it, y’know?” Stan told him.

“Wh--” the kid’s head came up again. “ _Sell it?!?_ ” the kid repeated, hitting the higher registers.

“...Grunkle Stan?” he heard coming from nearby Ford. He pretended not to hear his grand-niece for the moment, though. Kind of had to, for this.

“Yeah,” Stan told the kid, not looking away from him. “Next time? Demand to see a mirror, or something. You can’t really tell a person’s age just by looking at their clothing. Faces are better. Wrinkles, and stuff. _You_ know.”

The kid looked absolutely flabbergasted. Stan would’ve bet anything that right then, the kid had absolutely idea what to say or do next. _Again._ ...And was probably thinking something along the lines of, ‘How is this even my life?’ Heh.

“Okay, okay,” Stan told him in half-laughing, half-teasing tones, on purpose. “Let’s try this. Why don’t _you_ tell me something that only Bill would know, and maybe _that_ ’ll convince me. Yeah?”

The kid stared at him for a moment in shock, then got mad quick. “-- _How is THAT supposed to work?!?_ ” the kid yelled out at him, irate.

“Wellllll, if you _can’t_ \--”

“ **I KNOW LOTS OF THINGS** ,” the kid growled out at him, glaring. “But _**you don’t**_.”

“So?”

“SO--” the kid took in a deep breath, actually looked like he might be trying to get a grip on his anger. ...Or maybe a better grip on Stan’s arms. “I could tell you just about anything, but you wouldn’t know it was something _I_ know--”

“That Bill knew,” Stan interrupted.

The kid gritted his teeth, and his grip tightened a little more. “That _I know_ , unless it’s something that both you and I know, and you _also_ know that I--”

“Bill.”

“--know.”

“Knew.”

“--and that I--”

“He.”

“--I’m _RIGHT HERE!_ ” the kid yelled at him.

“Bill _died_ , kid.”

“--And now I’m back!”

“How?” Stan asked him, simply.

That seemed to bring the kid up short. He got a bit of a deer-in-headlights look and went a little stiff.

“What?” Stan all-but-scoffed. “Is that one too hard for you? How, exactly, did you come back?”

“I--” The kid’s right eye twitched twice, and Stan could _see_ Ford straightening in place out of the corner of his eye. “That’s--”

Stan adopted a mock-patient look.

The kid gritted his teeth, and looked away a bit. His grip on Stan’s arms went slightly loose. “There’s… a couple different ways that…” he muttered quietly.

“What, you don’t remember?”

The kid swiveled his eyes right back onto him, and gave him most hated-filled look he’d ever received in his _life_.

...and he’d been put on the kill list for entire mobster families before.

“Okay,” Stan said with a shrug. “Let’s try something easier, then. --How’d you get the bump on your noggin’?”

That seemed to throw the kid for a loop.

“The back of your head?” Stan prompted.

The kid’s eyes dropped slightly, and went a little unfocused, then narrowed. He let go of Stan with his left hand, and swayed in place, leaning on him with his right hand a little harder as he reached back to feel around the back of his head, eyes going sideways like he was trying to see what was wrong, even though he couldn’t.

“Kid, seriously? You can’t feel that? It doesn’t hurt?”

The kid closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as he felt over the bandages with his fingers. “ _Everything_ hurts right now,” the kid told him quietly, with an undertone of anger.

Stan heard a quiet snort from the side, probably from Dipper.

He watched as the kid finally dropped his hand away from the back of his head. He looked… irritated. “Thought it was just the light,” the kid muttered. Then the kid blinked like he thought there was maybe something wrong with that statement, but wasn’t entirely sure what. He raised his head and his eyes to look out over Stan’s shoulder, and he got a slight frown.

Stan grimaced slightly, then pushed it aside. “So, do you remember how you got _that?_ ” he asked, regaining the kid’s attention, who moved his gaze back over to Stan again.

They got caught in an impromptu sort of a staring match for awhile.

“... _No_ ,” the kid finally admitted, like it was pulling teeth.

“Ford?” Stanley asked a bit louder, not taking his eyes away from the kid’s.

He felt the kid tense slightly under his hands, during the pregnant pause Ford took before responding.

“I cold-clocked him out of reflex when I found him,” Ford said slowly, as if he was considering something. “But…” Ford let out a sigh. “He may have been injured before I hit him. There was blood on the ground already, and… I suppose he may not have been entirely conscious of what he was doing.”

Stan glanced over at his brother. “What was he doing?”

“Trying to stand up.” Ford was frowning. “He was struggling to do so. He was the closest to me where I entered the clearing, so I hit him first. I didn’t realize until after, that…” He shook his head. “I didn’t get much of a good shot off at the two cultists I saw running from the clearing; they had a head-start. There may have been a third, or a fourth? I still need to go back to check the tracks. _He_ did something to scare them off, that much was obvious from the yelling,” Ford said, clenching his jaw for a moment. “And with Cipher’s body missing--!” Ford shook his head. “Stanley, I think they--”

“I was talking to Soos yesterday about moving the thing,” Stanley cut in.

Ford looked utterly horrified as that sunk in.

“ _Stanley--!_ ”

“Sorry, Mr. Pines,” Soos cut in, and Stan glanced over his shoulder to see the new Mr. Mystery looking apologetic on the other side of the porch railing, next to several other members of their odd little Weirdmageddon gang. “Wasn’t me. I was gonna do that tomorrow afternoon. I only just got the golf cart fixed so it could hold the statue this morning.”

“Okay,” Stan said reasonably. “Doesn’t mean that somebody else didn’t move it in the meantime. Those idiot tourists have been screwing around with it for weeks--” He took in a breath, half-expecting an explosion from the kid in front of him about _’tourists?!?!’_. ...It didn’t come. “--and we shoved it around a bit making sure we _could_ move it.” Stan purposefully ignored how pale Ford got at even the idea of them touching it. ...or maybe just him. “Don’t think we got it back in exactly the same place. Somebody might’ve seen the drag marks and gotten the same idea as us.”

Ford looked like he was gathering breath, making himself stop and take a mental step back from the panic to regroup. And while he was doing that...

“...you two brainiacs done being loud for stupid reasons, yet?” the kid muttered out with no small irritation. Stan glanced back down at him to see him holding the side of his head oddly with his left hand, wincing somewhat with his eyes squinched closed. It almost looked like he wasn’t really sure that grabbing onto his own hair like he was and applying pressure like that would help or not, like it was a reflex he didn’t recognize as being a normal response to that kind of pain.

“You’re really not kidding about the headache, are ya,” Stanley stated. The kid slitted open his eyes to look up at him. “Only thing that hurts enough to drown out a hit to the back is a hurt right up front. And yeah, light makes those worse,” Stanley confirmed. Because yeah, a hit to the back of the head could knock you out, easy, but at least you didn’t stay awake for it, not beyond the initial explosion of pain right before loss of consciousness.

The kid looked for a moment like he was going to tell Stan off. ...But only for a _moment_. Then the kid’s clear irritation drained away, and left behind… nothing but heavy fatigue as his shoulders slumped again. The kid looked tired and hurt, just... _drained_ , if not downright exhausted. And he was pretty clearly thinking _something_ along the lines of, ‘I give up…’ or ‘Why am I even bothering to…?’

But he had never let go of Stan’s arm with his right hand. And Stan _noticed._

“C’mon,” Stan told him, slowly standing up and reaching for him. “You won’t be doing yourself any favors falling asleep out here.”

The kid looked up at him, puzzled, while Ford let out an almost quiet, “Stanley, what are you--”.

“Inside,” Stan told him. “C’mon, let’s go.” He tugged at the kid’s arms a bit.

“Wh-at?” the kid said as Stan tugged at him, letting go of Stanley and pulling back a bit, his hands sliding back down Stan’s arms to stop at his wrists. “Inside?” Then the kid narrowed his eyes at him, suspicious and maybe a little wary. “...Why?”

Stan eyed him. “Because you could use the sleep, in an actual bed,” he told him.

He heard Ford choke, and the kid just sort of stared up at him.

And then the kid’s face practically split sideways with the insane grin he was giving him. Coupled with the look in his eyes…

The kid started laughing almost maniacally, his eyes boring into his own. “You think I need your _help?!?_ ” he practically shouted out in amused, high-pitched glee. “I don't need your help! I certainly didn't ask for it!”

“Never said you did,” Stanley agreed, completely zen about it.

And the kid’s mouth slammed shut, staring.

Yeah, Stanley figured he’d read him right after all. The kid had that very _particular_ sort of insane feral look going on that Stanley had gotten all too used to seeing on the other side of his car door window when he been seventeen, and eighteen, and nineteen...

 _That_ look was near kissing-cousins with a particular sort of almost _hungry_ look that, whenever he’d seen it, had always had him shivering and starting his engine and moving himself and his car somewhere else for the night, no matter how little gas he had left in the fuel tank, because it was still safer than staying there with them.

Because the only thing Stanley had had left was his car, and he hadn’t had the money in his pocket to replace the windshield or the tires or anything else if they broke it. And they would have, out of pure spite. Just as soon as it occurred to them in short order that wrecking his car would’ve made him _just like them_.

 _I don't need you, and you don't have anyone either. I'll **prove** it to you_.

He’d heard it said in a thousand different voices, a thousand different ways, over the years. The only real difference between Stan, and the rest of them, was that he’d had his car, he’d had his stubborn refusal to give in to what everybody else had ever told him and just stop trying, and he’d never ever given either of those two things up.

This kid, if he was reading him right -- and Stanley would bet money that he was -- he didn’t see that sort of deranged spiteful hunger in. Maybe the kid might think of burning down the Shack as some form of payback for some actual direct offense, but he wouldn’t do it simply out of pure spite, for hate at the very thought of someone else having what he didn’t have, a house of his own that he could sleep safely inside.

 _This_ kid, he had a feeling, had more of a mindset going on of, if seeing something he wanted, either taking what he wanted _right then_ , or going out and getting it himself.

And that was something he could work with. _That_ was something Stan understood.

The kid got over his initial shock pretty quickly, and repeated, in tones of anger, “I _don’t_ need your help.”

“So what?” Stan told him, dropping his arms to the kid’s torso, lifting him up and setting him on his feet. “Doesn’t matter,” he told the kid, who was now looking at him funny. “You’re getting it anyway.”

He let the kid stare straight into his eyes, and see how dead serious he was.

He also let the kid take a moment to realize how he was holding him just then -- keeping him on his feet by taking the majority of his weight, but not keeping him from pulling away, in a way that wouldn’t look to anyone else like he was doing anything more than putting his hands a little above the kid’s waistline.

‘ _Not trying to make you look weak, kid. Just take it, already._ ’

The kid looked up at him, hands braced on his forearms, and frowned. He looked angry, offended, touchy as hell, and more than ready to tell him off.

He also looked just a little bit uncertain, and that was how Stanley knew he had him.

“C’mon, kid,” he told him, lifting the kid’s left arm over his shoulder. “We’re going inside.”

He specifically and consciously phrased it as a statement deliberately, in such a way that the only way to turn it down now would be a strong and outright ‘no’. He didn’t smile as the kid began to move forward with him towards the door, didn’t relax, didn’t change his expression in any way or say anything else that could come across as potentially condescending or superior, or hint at his having ‘won’ what he’d wanted at all. He didn’t act in any way like there was even really a choice to be made here -- not in a way that made it seem like he thought the kid had no choice but to do what he said, not in the least, rather the opposite -- he acted as though him making and the kid taking the offer of a bed was as expected and as natural as breathing, that it didn’t even require any thought to have made the offer, and that the offer required no thought or effort to say ‘yes’ to and do. He didn’t give the kid any openings to object to.

\--Basically, he played it as dirty as he could to make it as hard as possible for the kid to turn him down.

And it worked.

\---


End file.
